One more part of Course Review Season 2…
Oh, god. I don’t want to do this. Remember how I basically yapped about how Integrated 2A was hell and I was struggling to survive? Well, I still managed to get an A there. I finished the class on a 91 or 92 percent. I didn’t get a single test grade that was higher than a 92%, although I did well enough to the point that I never got a test grade lower than a 90%.
Apparently the teacher I got that time wasn’t the worst teacher possible. There was another one that was even worse- infamous for being the harshest grader in town. She did Calc BC as another class, which is four years ahead of Integrated 2B levels. Based on people’s descriptions of this teacher, she basically expected us to have the same abilities of the Calc BC kids.
My first test proved as such. It was the first major test in which I didn’t get an A. My score was somewhere in the B range and it brought my grade all the way down to an 83.
It took a lot of work and studying to get ahead. I made sure to spare the hour I needed for the math homework, and the situation improved. This teacher was renowned for killing everyone’s GPA, and the score I got on the final exam showed some visible improvement – 99% on the multiple choice and a 93% on the MC, which averages out to a 96%.
So what did we actually go over in this class that made it so challenging for everyone? Honestly, I’m not sure what made it so difficult. It’s become fairly easy for me now despite all the witch hunting and writing in the 3rd tri, my trigonometry grade has not dropped below a 96- that’s a story for another time, though. Once again, this tri follows the integrated system which integrates the algebraic and geometric aspects together in order to make a broader class. The path I took is the Integrated 2A-2B-Trig path, which means that the math class I make for the third tri won’t be part of the Integrated system. Here’s a list of pathways again:
Math XL- 1A-1B: No one does this unless they’re really bad at math. No offense to those who are taking this path, but you’re either really incompetent or are going too easy on yourself.
1A-1B-2A: This path is also known for being the one that “dumb” people take, but there are some people here that actually know what they’re doing. It’s supposed to be the regular path, but the overly competitive nature of our school has made it appear as the idiot path.
2A-2B-Trig: this is the mediocre path that most people will take, although you can go a lot quicker than this. I’m doing this path; it’s supposedly the advanced path but no one actually considers it to be that way because once again, we’re too competitive.
Literally any path ending in precalc: this is the “average” path that is supposed to be viewed as “rigorous”. There are many sub variations of this path but they include doing all of int 2 and 3 in one year, just integrated 3, or 2b and 3 as well as prevails.
AP Calc AB- the path that most people will do right after int 3 and precalc. I only know a few people who have done this before, and those who have done it are absolute geniuses.
AP Calc BC- the one after AB. I didn’t mention it last time because at the time I only knew sophomores, juniors, and seniors would take it. It was primarily meant for seniors and very competent and competitive juniors- not freshmen. But recently I found out there’s one kid in my freshman year- only one who’s in Calc BC and he’s in a class full of seniors. I don’t know this guy personally, but I thought it was worth noting.
So what was the actual material about? Well, we continued right where we left off at the end of integrated 2a and started immediately with the same textbook. If you recall, we learned all the material from chapters 1 to 5 in 2A. This time, we expanded off of that and learned everything from chapters 6 to 11. It was just as fast paced with harsher grading. I struggled at first, but then I started to do surprisingly well and pulled myself out of the B range and back into the A. My final grade was a 93%, which was very surprising because of how rigorous math could be at times. I went back to my norm of carrying all the people at my table with no problem and although people weren’t as dependent on me, it was still successful. (Wait till you read the Trig course review- I dominated that class. But no spoilers)(and yes, I’m writing this during the third tri.)
So here’s the material for the next units, although I don’t imagine you reading this unless you’re a math geek or something. There’s way too much to explain in a few short pages, so I’ll try to keep it basic lest I write a whole math textbook of my own. So… yeah. Expect some holes and potentially fancy words that you don’t know.:
Unit 6: More info on trigonometry. More specifically, special right triangles, which are basically right triangles with specific angles that give them fancy names. This was kind of a weird unit, though, because the unit itself consisted of three lessons on right triangles and pythagorean triples, and then we just had one kind of “black sheep” lesson on radicals and fractional exponents. I have absolutely no idea how these two are connected, but maybe it’s something I’ll learn in Integrated III.
Unit 7: Back to probability, which is everyone’s worst nightmare! We talk a lot about the probability of certain events GIVEN that we already have another event, which is called conditional probability. This was probably one of the hardest concepts for me to get immediately, but it’s no issue for me anymore. Oh, and did I mention that there’s also a bunch of geometric proof stuff in here too? I don’t know how they make these textbooks. It’s just like they somewhat randomly ordered things and lumped a bunch of unconnected topics into one chapter.
Unit 8: Okay, this one is actually pretty united. It’s mostly about polygons and the very basics of circles (such as finding the area of an arc, which is a part of a circle) as well as more similarity stuff.
Unit 9: This one’s pretty united, too, but they really added a lot of topics. They discuss transforming parabolas, which are the graphs of quadratics. Then they taught us how to solve systems of quadratics and piecewise functions, which are essentially just multiple functions that are used depending on your x-value. Inverse functions also exist, and we had, like, one lesson on them the whole tri.
Unit 10: This is the main unit concerning circles. They have all these crazy circle related theorems as well as the equation of one, which I didn’t know existed.
Unit 11: This one’s about 3d solids and volumes, so mostly things on a 3d scale.
Unit 12: We never covered this, but it’s called ‘counting’. It’s literally called counting. 1… 2… 3… just kidding, but that’s actually the name. They just use that as the name for this crazy probability concept that we’re about to go over in Trig next week, and geez, people are gonna hate that…
So, what are my overarching thoughts on this class? Uh, honestly, it could be worse. Just do your homework, because they stopped checking for our homework this tri for some reason and as you can probably expect, that’s turned into a disaster. Third tri they made us check our homeworks again. Yes, I actually did homework, I’m not that bad.